OPINION: Ok, we all need to stop using Bebas Neue.
I’ve used Bebas Neue.
It was a dark and stormy night. No, seriously, it was. And I had to find a font to use in the app I was designing. The app was called Karkoona and it was a license-plate based messaging app. Of course, that’s a story for another night but listen: I only bring it up because, due to the nature of the app, I wanted to find a typeface that looked a bit car-license-plate-y. We’ve all been there, right?
I don’t know how it happened, but it did: maybe I was browsing FontSquirrel or dafont or PornHub (wait, you didn’t know about the rapidly-growing subgenre of typeporn and its usual tropes, the ‘kernpie’ and ‘amperhand’?) or maybe I wrote ‘license plate font’ in Google’s search field but I had found the font I needed. I proudly showed it to the other guys in the team.
Bebas. Neue.
There wasn’t much rejoicing but they seemed to like it. And, truth be told, it fit the app pretty well.
But here’s the thing. After using it for Karkoona (only for styling the license plates text views), I started noticing it everywhere. Fast food delivery service? Bebas Neue. Craft beer producer? Bebas Neue. Manure removal company? Bebas Neue.
Soon I was waking up in the middle of the night, heart beating at 200bpm and screaming “Neueeeeeeeeeeeeeee!” Thankfully, a sip or two from the bottle of bourbon I kept next to my bed would help me settle down.
But it didn’t last. My family had to admit me into a Typechiatric asylum, where I was shown ‘Helvetica’, the documentary, repeateadly, with my eyelids kept open with some sort of pinchers.
It was when I saw the pinchers themselves that my actual descent into madness began. As the orderly removed them from my eyes, I caught a glimpse of the text on them: it said “pinchers”, which, ok, fair enough but at least give an inkling of a shit about your branding. But the scary part was this: the text was set in Bebas Neue.
A darkness came over me. I needed it to end. So I picked up an old printing press and threw it through the window, thusly facilitating my escape.
I’m now writing this blog post from my secret hideout in the woods. I use an old, friendly owl as my hotspot (those ear-tufts are pretty great antenas) and a the flowing streak next to me to generate enough electricity to power my Chromebook. I’m also taking a dump under a sycamore tree right now. The stars are beautiful tonight.
Please heed the warning of a broken old man: Bebas Neue is played out and it has lost any impact it might have had back in 2010. Use Ostrich Sans or something. If you don’t mind paying some money, Bison is similar but way more flexible and your nan probably hasn’t used it in her PowerPoint presentation about Tupperware she gave to her bingo club.
That’s it. That’s my story. Now forgive me: I need to wipe.
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